In
organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.Clayden, ...
the addition of the prefix benzo to the name of a chemical compound indicates the addition of an even number of carbon atoms to an
unsaturated or already
aromatic compound
Aromatic compounds, also known as "mono- and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons", are organic compounds containing one or more aromatic rings. The parent member of aromatic compounds is benzene. The word "aromatic" originates from the past grouping ...
by which a new aromatic ring is formed. Between the prefix ''benzo'' and the name of the parent compound then place of the addition of the extra carbon atoms is indicated by letters written between square brackets.
[In the names of pages in the Wikipedia curved brackets are used, as square brackets lead to malfunctioning in links to those pages.] Quite often the number of added carbon atoms is four, although sometimes two else will do the job as shown in the following table. The first entry also shows different routes to the name of the same molecule.
Examples
See also
*
Benzodiazepine
References
{{reflist
Benzoid and non benzoid compoundss